Publications
Partners
In Grahamstown’s botanical gardens last night a magical thing took place, something unforgettable.
For two special hours a handful of this year’s National Arts Festival patrons were guided through the hills and pathways, beneath the trees and towering aloes, on a processional journey through the park to connect two star-crossed lovers in the landscape that had torn them apart. Afriqueer happened last night, and I was there.
The experience – my first of the National Arts Festival, which officially opened on Thursday – was directed by Warren Nebe of theatre group Drama for Life with a team of performance artists from Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa.
It began after a few confusing minutes outside the garden gates, each of us working out exactly what was going on in this dark corner of the city. After some anxious exchanges with the box office officials we were herded inside the gates by the light of the ushers kerosene lamps.
Along a dusty path far ahead of us a gang of four men, bare-chested and kaross-clothed, make their way toward us, singing and shaking up the dust with their feet. Behind them we see our narrator: a slinky, sometimes slimy, hustler who tells us the tale of the two boys – our heros - who fall in love with each other. Theirs is that once-in-a-lifetime kind of passion, he tells us, the sort with the power to change their destinies forever.
As we move through the garden, from natural amphitheatres formed by the branches of acacia trees to the dusty pathways of mountain veld, we follow their path to become bona fide, African, masculine “men”. Through movement, soundscape, monologue and drawn chalk symbols we soon learn that their separate lives are getting in the way of their love, stunting their growth into the real men their communities expect them to become.
What plays out is a tragedy of African proportions all set within the natural environment of the gardens, the barefoot performers taking us worlds away from the red velvet curtains just a few minutes down the road. By the ingenious use of lighting the production creates these spectacular natural stage sets that, when lit up so theatrically, completely alter the nature of the performances, making those privileged spaces seem stuffy, and old-fashioned.
The whole performance challenges the roles we are used to. Actor and audience, stage and seat, straight and queer, African and Western. Even the ushers became an integral part of the show, lighting the way for us to move with the show.
It left me feeling at once alone and then part of something kindred, bedazzled and then humbled, hurt and then admired. It is a shining example of a new age of theatre that can only inspire new audiences to rush to the physical arts for the thrill of something new, and also hopefully remind older (more jaded) audiences that theatre can still change the way they see the world.
I did however take issue with the last few minutes of the work –when audiences are locked in a room with a performer that, in a really raw moment of emotion, starts spitting whole, raw eggs at the audience. As much as I appreciated the visceral idea of the eggs as symbols in themselves, and their smashing as an activity, I felt it was a step too far to inflict that on the audience. It made the work lose the elegance it had managed to maintain so eloquently, and cleaning the detritus off my clothes later in the night was a moment, and smell, I would prefer not to experience again. But never a dull moment at arts fest you know.
* The show has just returned from Botswana and will soon be coming to the rest of the country. Follow #Afriqueer and #NAF16 on Twitter to find out where they’ll be next.
